Trump set to meet Zelensky amid GOP tensions over Ukraine assistance

By Jeremy Herb, CNN

(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet at Trump Tower on Friday morning, according to Trump, giving the Ukrainian leader the chance to make a personal pitch to a GOP presidential nominee openly skeptical of continued US security assistance for Ukraine against Russia.

Trump told reporters Thursday he would be sitting down with Zelensky, a meeting that had appeared murky earlier in the week following comments from both leaders critical of the other.

Still, it’s unclear whether Zelensky can say anything to convince Trump to change his position on the Russia-Ukraine war and US security assistance. Friday’s meeting comes at a pivotal moment for Zelensky ahead of November’s US election. He’s sought this week to convince the Biden administration that his country can still win the war, so long as the US and other countries significantly and quickly ramp up military assistance.

Trump has repeatedly complained about the funding the US has provided for Ukraine and claimed he will quickly end the war between the two sides, which began with Russia’s unprovoked invasion in February 2022. Zelensky said this week that Trump doesn’t know how to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“I look forward to seeing him,” Trump said Thursday. “We’ll see — I do believe I disagree with him — well, he doesn’t know me. I disagree, but I will say this: I believe I will be able to make a deal between President Putin and President Zelensky quite quickly.”

Zelensky met at the White House on Thursday with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Democratic nominee used the appearance to draw a stark contrast with Trump on Ukraine.

“There are some in my country who would instead force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory, who would demand that Ukraine accept neutrality and would require Ukraine to forego security relationships with other nations,” Harris said.

Zelensky’s anticipated meeting with Trump one day after visiting the White House puts him once again in the middle of a heated US political campaign – five years after Zelensky was caught up in another US domestic political firestorm.

In fact, it’s been just over five years since Trump last met in person with Zelensky, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. The meeting occurred amid a Democratic impeachment investigation into Trump for denying Zelensky a White House visit and US aid to Ukraine while Trump tried to get the Ukrainians to announce an investigation into then-presidential candidate Biden.

Trump would ultimately be impeached by House Democrats over pressuring Zelensky to investigate Biden. The Ukrainian president, meanwhile, finally got a meeting in the Oval Office – with Biden – in September 2021.

Trump revealed on his Truth Social site Thursday that he had recently spoken by phone with Zelensky. But an in-person meeting while Zelensky, who was in town for the UN General Assembly, appeared unlikely earlier this week.

At a rally Wednesday, Trump criticized Zelensky and claimed the Ukrainian president “refuses to make a deal” with Russia, marking the former president’s most explicit criticism of Zelensky’s handling of the war to date. 

“Those cities are gone, they’re gone, and we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refused to make a deal, Zelensky. There was no deal that he could have made that wouldn’t have been better than the situation you have right now. You have a country that has been obliterated, not possible to be rebuilt,” Trump said during a campaign speech in Mint Hill, North Carolina.

Trump’s Republican allies in Congress are also furious with Zelensky for his visit to a Pennsylvania ammunition plant along with Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro. They’ve argued his visit to the key battleground state, which is home to a sizable population of people of Ukrainian ancestry, had partisan motivations, with House Speaker Mike Johnson calling on Zelensky to fire the Ukrainian ambassador to the US. Republicans have also taken issue with Zelensky calling Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the GOP vice presidential candidate, “too radical” in an interview with The New Yorker.

In the same interview, Zelensky criticized Trump, saying: “My feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how. With this war, oftentimes, the deeper you look at it the less you understand.”

Trump left things open-ended when asked Thursday whether he believes Ukraine should cede territory to Russia as a means of ending the war.

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters at Trump Tower.

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